Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 20 January 1975
Darwin Rebuilds
Recommendations have already been submitted for ‘cyclone proof’ house designs to replace those homes demolished by Christmas Eve’s Cyclone Tracy that destroyed most of Darwin.
JED
The dining room smelled of furniture polish and fresh coffee. Jim looked up from the leather folder of papers lying on the table. ‘I now declare this meeting open.’
His secretary, Miss Shaw, scribbled her shorthand in her notebook.
‘Lovely, darling. Would you like a scone?’
‘No, thank you, Mother.’
‘There’s some lovely strawberry jam. More coffee?’
‘Maybe later. Any apologies?’
Matilda gazed at him over the top of her glasses. ‘Unless you or your brother had an indiscretion twenty-one years ago, I can assure you there are no missing family directors.’
‘Mother! Things need to be done properly,’ said Jim.
‘Define “properly”,’ said Jed.
‘In an orderly fashion, according to the rules of —’
‘I was joking,’ said Jed hastily.
The minutes of the previous meeting were read, the auditor’s statement approved. Jed looked at the next item on the agenda: President’s report.
For the first time Jim hesitated. ‘You’ve all read the latest accounts. Or I assume you have.’
‘I am not in the habit of signing off on any account I haven’t read.’ Matilda might have been talking to a recalcitrant editor on the Gibber’s Creek Gazette, not her son.
‘I never thought you would, Mum,’ said Jim gently. ‘But the accounts tell the story better than I can. That’s why I have called this special meeting.’ He gazed at each of them around the table. ‘We’re going broke.’
‘But we made a profit!’ said Jed.
‘Eighty per cent down on last year. Look at the graphs. We made money this year. We may just manage to do so next year. But not after that. Our products can’t compete with imports any more. The tariffs that made Thompson’s Industries possible no longer exist. You can pay someone in a factory in China or India four cents an hour. Thompson’s can’t compete with that.’
‘But we still made a profit!’ said Jed stubbornly. ‘People want to buy Thompson’s because they are good products.’
‘People bought Thompson’s out of habit this year. Next year, or the one after, they’ll notice they can buy what they want at half the price. Loyalty or not, customers will eventually go for value for money.’
Jim looked around the table. ‘We need to face facts. Wages rose twenty-eight per cent in the past year alone. Consumer prices have risen sixteen per cent in the same time, and inflation is getting worse, not better, yet the government has increased the value of the Australian dollar by twenty-five per cent. That’s in one year! Who knows what we’ll face next year? Businesses like ours are closing across the country. Good efficient businesses that can’t keep up with rising wages, a rising dollar and falling tariffs.’
‘You want to close the factories,’ said Jed flatly.
‘No. Of course not. Dad spent his life building up Thompson’s. I’m not going to let him down now.’
‘But —’ began Jed.
‘Jim means he plans to close the Australian factories and reopen them overseas, where he too can pay four cents an hour,’ said Matilda coolly.
Silence sat upon the room. Finally Jed asked, ‘Do you?’
‘I wouldn’t have put it quite like that. We’ll keep our main offices here. And some of the assembly.’
‘So you can still say Made in Australia,’ stated Matilda.
‘So they are made in Australia, Mum. I’ll leave everything I can here.’
‘The Gibber’s Creek factory?’
He looked at her steadily. ‘It has to go.’
‘But half the town depends on it. Especially with the biscuit factory shutting down.’
‘Is it?’ demanded Jed.
Matilda nodded. ‘It’s not general knowledge yet. Blue told me. She’s heartbroken. But the new owners will keep their promise. It won’t close till at least two years after the sale date. Blue never thought to ask for longer.’
‘Thompson’s does not employ half the town,’ said Jim calmly. ‘Maybe a tenth at the most.’
Jed stared at him. ‘You can’t do this!’
‘No, I can’t. I need you to vote with me. One of you, at least.’ Jim looked at each of them in turn. ‘We have to move operations overseas, or go bust within three years. If we leave it too long, even the factories will be almost worthless, with so many other businesses closing or moving offshore.’
‘We can work out something else!’ insisted Jed. ‘Cut costs.’
‘They’re already cut to the bone,’ said Jim wearily. ‘You think I want this? I’ve been working night and day, trying to come up with an alternative. I can’t.’
‘Advertise!’
Jim kept his voice patient. ‘It costs money to advertise, nor would it be cost effective. Do you really think advertising will make someone buy a radio for twice the price of the next one on the shelf?’
‘Can’t we . . .’ Jed hunted for the word ‘. . . diversify? Make something else? Something that will mean no one has to lose their jobs?’
‘Make what? Can you think of any product that can’t be made more cheaply overseas? Because I have spent the last six months trying to find another solution, and I can’t. The factories are set up for specific products. We don’t have the money to completely refit them, nor do we have the expertise. And most Australian industry is in the same boat, now tariffs have removed their protection.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Shall we put it to the vote?’
‘Yes!’ said Jed.
‘May I say something first?’ asked Matilda.
‘Of course, Mum,’ said Michael. Jim nodded.
‘Thompson’s Industries is not just about money. It never was.’ Matilda looked at each of them along the table. ‘The dream of well-run, efficient factories that could and would pay fair wages was born in the slums of Sydney, when your father was a boy who was good with his hands, who could mend a machine as well as stoke the boiler. Thompson’s Industries is part of our heritage. Your father was proud that Australia led the world in aircraft design, motorcar manufacture, the first refrigeration, movie-making long before Hollywood, ship building and new wireless techniques.’ Matilda glanced at Jed. ‘Without Australian ingenuity, humans would never have gone to the moon and back. This is the heritage you’d move from our shores now?’
‘Mum,’ said Jim gently, ‘history is all very well. But Hollywood eclipsed Australian movies decades ago. Times change. We’re no longer riding on the sheep’s back, nor are we a leading industrial nation. We can’t be. Not when two-thirds of the world can make whatever we use cheaper than it can be made here.’
‘Then what will Australia be?’ asked Matilda fiercely. ‘Who are we if we lose our industry? A series of holes in the ground for foreigners to take our iron or bauxite for a pittance and make them into metal elsewhere — and then make cars or . . . or saucepans elsewhere too that we then need to buy from them?’
‘Mum, I know all that. Better than you do.’ Jim held up a hand. ‘This isn’t about respecting Dad’s memory. No one respects him more than I do. That’s why I don’t want to see what he created vanish within a decade. Times change, and Thompson’s Industries needs to change with them. It doesn’t mean I want that change. I would like nothing more than to keep our industries on Australian soil. Where will we be when the next war comes if we don’t have the skills or experience to build a warship or an aircraft, or even a refrigerator? But Australia’s future isn’t my concern.’
‘It’s all of our concerns,’ interjected Jed.
‘All right. I accept that. But saving Thompson’s Industries means more to me. We move production, or we go under. Mum, do you want to say any more?’
‘There is nothing more to be said.’ Matilda met Jed’s eye, Michael’s, then Jim’s. ‘This is the future of our nation, not just a business. Let us vote.’
‘All in favour of moving whatever production is necessary overseas, with all due consideration given to retaining as much as possible in Australia. Who says aye?’ Jim raised his hand.
Jed kept hers in her lap. Matilda glanced up at the portrait of Tommy on the wall, then met Jim’s eyes with a small smile of triumph.
‘Aye,’ said Michael quietly. He raised his hand.
‘Michael!’ cried Jed.
Matilda said nothing.
Michael looked at his mother with sympathy, but no apology. Michael knew we were going to be asked to vote on this, thought Jed. Jim has convinced him already. Just as Jim knew she would vote with Matilda, and what Matilda’s vote would be, and that there was no point in trying to convince his mother to vote ‘yes’.
‘I’m sorry, Mum, Jed. But the income from Overflow and Drinkwater can’t pay for River View. Not any more, with oil prices and other farm costs rising, and the export market crashing with the rise in the dollar. Those kids matter. So do their wheelchairs and other technical aids for the disabled. If Thompson’s goes under, they go too.’
‘I’ll pay,’ began Jed, then realised even her million dollars would not keep River View going for long. She might manage to pay River View’s costs with her income from Thompson’s. But if that went . . .
The Thompsons had been rich. But factories lost money, cost money, far more than any of the family had.
But surely, somehow, there must be another way . . .
‘Any other business?’ asked Jim quietly.
Matilda stood. ‘I suggest we suspend this meeting for a fortnight.’
‘Of course, Mum.’ Jim reached over and took her hand, then stood and kissed her.
She clung to him briefly. ‘You’re doing what you think is best,’ she said.
‘I’m doing what Dad would have had to do too.’
The words, ‘Your father would never have got into this mess . . .’ whispered about the room. But no one spoke them. And perhaps, thought Jed, they were not even true. Tommy Thompson’s fortune had been based on Australia’s strong protectionism, making foreign-owned companies’ goods cost twice as much as Australian made. Protectionism had created a strong industrial base for the nation. And ordinary Australians had paid higher prices and had well-paid jobs because of it.
What would Tommy have said about closing the Gibber’s Creek factory?
‘I have been privileged to see the height of one age, and the beginning of the next.’ That was what Tommy had told her once, forcing his failing heart to beat until he saw a man walk upon the moon. It was as though she heard his voice, sitting across from her at the dining-room table. Jed grinned. For suddenly she knew exactly what Tommy Thompson would have done now. And she was his great-granddaughter.
Jim was right, but he was also very, very wrong. Times had changed. But then times always did.
She forced her voice to sound matter-of-fact. ‘Can I have an option on the Gibber’s Creek factory?’
Jim stared. ‘What?’
‘I want to rent — no, buy the factory. How much will you sell it for?’
‘A hundred thousand dollars.’
He’s already priced the company’s assets, thought Jed. ‘Far too high. Who’s going to want a factory at Gibber’s Creek these days?’
‘You.’
‘But I can buy Blue’s. Or build another.’
‘Ninety thousand.’
‘Twenty, and you are getting a bargain, because you won’t have it sitting empty, losing value, paying rates and probably never saleable. Not here.’
‘Shall we vote on it?’ asked Matilda. For the first time that day she sounded genuinely amused. ‘You’ll be outvoted,’ she added to Jim.
‘No. It will be unanimous.’ Jim held out his hand. Jed shook it. ‘Twenty thousand it is. What on earth do you intend to do with a building that size? Hold rock concerts?’
Jed grinned. ‘Open a factory.’
‘Making what? There’s no way you can make it pay.’
‘Yes, I can.’ Jed met his gaze. ‘If Australia can’t compete with four-cents-an-hour wages, we’ll have to invent something people need and which other countries can’t make.’
‘Like what?’
‘Photovoltaic panels,’ said Jed. ‘The most efficient in the world.’
‘What the flaming hell are photo— thingummies?’ demanded Jim.
Matilda smiled serenely at her sons and her great-granddaughter. ‘Won’t it be fun to find out?’